Bernard MacLaverty's 1983 novel Cal takes place during the conflict in Northern Ireland, colloquially known as "the Troubles." Although first and foremost a dramatic story of a 19-year-old man named Cal and his personal story of growing up and traversing guilt, the novel's backdrop of the Troubles contributes a very important aspect of the plot, showing how easily young men in this period became entangled in terrorist groups and gave up all future prospects. The strife in Ireland was a mostly political problem, although there were also religious dividing lines. The Republican Catholic faction, to which Cal belongs, desired an autonomous Ireland without the paternalistic interference of Great Britain. The Loyalist Protestant group believed that Northern Ireland must remain part of the United Kingdom. Everything from bombings to robbery to brutal murder were instigated in order for each side to assert their dominance, resulting in decades of bloodshed, broken families, and a ruin of trust in one's fellow countrymen.
MacLaverty is far from the only author to capture these chaotic events through the word; writers such as Brian Moore, Ronan Bennett, Eoin McNamee, and Anna Burns all have revealed particular angles of the conflict through their own fiction. The scholar Laura Pelaschiar notes the explosion of literature in Northern Ireland starting in the late 1960s and extending throughout the period of the Troubles, making a case that such turbulent times inspired new writers to grapple with Irish identity through fiction as well as brought global attention to a region that was formerly not regarded as a site for literary output. In the introduction to her book Writing the North, Pelaschiar writes, "Although a Northern Irish literary tradition did exist prior to [the Troubles,] it was largely made up of lone voices which struggled to be heard. What happened in the sixties, and especially following the outbreak of the Troubles, was undoubtedly more intense, more visible, more ambitious and more international."
Thus such civil unrest, though certainly tragic, can also be understood as an impetus that drove the formation of a more distinct Northern Irish culture. Conflict encouraged the people of this region to question their identity apart from the amorphous categorization of the British empire. As Pelaschiar argues, the political violence of the late 20th century prompted the creation of a "new language," a unique style of writing that reflects and affirms the Norther Irish experience. Perhaps one achievement of this style is the ability for authors, like Bernard MacLaverty, to tell stories where neither the microcosm nor the macrocosm of the human condition are neglected; critic Richard Haslam describes MacLaverty's writing as a place where "elements of personal and political conflict intersect."
